After winning the first two games of the series in comeback fashion the Marlins once again laid in egg in game 3. Sunday, very simply, was just not the Marlins day. While the Marlins had comeback to win both the first games of the series, I kind of new in the middle of the 5th that the Marlins most likely would not come back to win the game. In the bottom of the 4th Sanchez gave up a two run double to the pitcher J.A. Happ which is never good, and then in the 5th with Wes Helms on 2nd and Donnie Murphy on 1st with no outs the Marlins feel apart. First you had Helms get picked off at 2nd base and a few pitches later Anibal Sanchez bunts a ball with 2 outs into foul territory for the second out. The Marlins scoring threat was over and the Marlins gave up 3 runs in the bottom of the inning and never threatened again.

While I believed that going into the series the Marlins should sweep the series, the Marlins may have lucked out to take 2 of 3 in Houston, where they have not had much success in the pst. The reason for the change was the Hanley injury in game 1. Hanley was hurt when Bill Hall took and aggressive slide into 2nd base which caused Hanley to roll on the ground in pain. Luckily it seems as though the Marlins should have Hanley back in the starting lineup Tuesday, but with him not playing in games 2 and 3 and Mike Stanton still seemed to be bothered by his hamstring injury (was still running rather gingerly) the Marlins lineup lacks any real power threat. With the ways others are hitting right now, without Hanley and Mike not at 100% the Marlins top hitters at the moment are Gaby Sanchez, Logan Morrison, and then you can argue Greg Dobbs would be next with the way he is swinging the bat.

In their second starts of the year the Marlins were able to get an amazing performance out of Ricky Nolasco in game 1, going 8 much needed innings with a taxed bullpen. The in game 2, Javier Vazquez gave a much needed bounce back performance. While not a great performance, Vazquez was able to go 6 innings giving up 8 hits and 4 earned runs which was a huge improvement over his first outing (1.2IP, 6 hits, 5 walks, 4 earned runs). Unfortunately Anibal Sanchez has yet to really get going this year. Anibal only went 4.2 innings giving up 6 runs and 13 hits whole only striking out 2 plays, and this is following a performance where he only pitched 5.2 innings and gave up 7 hits. Most people did just focus in on the fact that Anibal had 7 strike outs and gave up 2 runs, but when you combine the two starts it is mildly concerning the amount of hits that he has given up in two games (20) and that he has not gone that far into games yet (10.1 innings pitched). It will still be another 3 starts before we can really pass judgment on what what kind of season pitchers are going to have, but the number of hits he is giving up is something to watch with Anibal.

The Marlins are now 5-4, which I find disappointing after playing 3 teams who will in all likelihood will not finish above .500. It is still very early in the season, but the Marlins have also yet to play against any of the top teams in the NL, like Philadelphia and are about to play their first game of year against Atlanta on Tuesday. Miami Heat fans know that the Heat do not have a good record against the top teams in the league this year, but they are going to win the 2nd seed in the East this year because of the fact that they have beaten up the under .500 teams in the league, and if the Marlins want to be in contention for the playoffs this year they are going to need to stack up wins against the under .500 teams in the NL.

Also while I Gaby Sanchez is my favorite player on this Florida Marlins team, I am all in on the Greg Dobbs bandwagon.

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